The first London Bookfair was held at the autonomy centre in Wapping. In what turned out to be the coldest day of the year, half a dozen anarchist publishers spread out their wares, and when hardly anyone turned up they played a pool tournament. It was a nice time and everyone said: “let’s do it again next year”. So we did.
The idea for the Anarchist Bookfair actually came from the SWP (or International Socialists as they were then). They used to hold a Socialist Bookfair at the Camden Centre. Lots of anarchists turned up, but it was a really boring event, expensive and loads of mainstream publishers. Anarchists there decided to hold our own version.
The idea was that it would be a smaller, but more fun, version of theirs, but ironically, the Socialist Bookfair died years ago and we used the Camden Centre a few years ago but outgrew it. We needed somewhere bigger!
The first Bookfair was in December 1981 and 2015 was our 35th Bookfair. The maths don't work out because for a couple of years we had two a year. Each year we've grown with more stallholders, more meetings and more people turning up on the day. Increasing number of people is why we have gradually changed venues, each time to a bigger place.